Why was the Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci so focused on making blueprints for machines that could do miraculous things, such as flying? Why did Charles Darwin travel around the world looking at plants and animals? Why did Steve Jobs devise high-tech products that made his company, Apple Inc., a world leader in computers and smartphones?

Ian Leslie, a London-based author and broadcaster, says these men were deeply curious, wanting more and more knowledge. In his book Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It, Leslie examines why some people have probing minds throughout their lives while others simply accept the status quo.

The conversation with Leslie has been edited for length.

What led you to choose the topic of curiosity?

It has long struck me that there is a big difference in the world between curious people and incurious people. You know when you meet someone who is curious because they are interested in what you have to say and they bring interesting perspectives to the conversation.

I’ve always wondered why people turn out to be so curious and eager to learn while others are just happy to do their thing, follow the same path and rely on what they know rather than try to build that knowledge.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a household which was full of books and conversation. My parents were people who were very curious. Neither of them went to university, so it has nothing to do with formal education. My parents enjoyed reading politics, philosophy and history. At the dinner table we’d talk about current affairs and the questions of the day. Everyone should grow up like this. The underlying mission of my book is to spread the word about curiosity, to help people be more curious.

You suggest that using Google constantly to look up information can be detrimental to our curiosity.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say Google is an enemy of curiosity. It is curiosity’s best friend and its worst enemy at the same time. It all depends on how you use it. If you’re curious and develop the habit of looking things up in Google, that’s great. Google is also great if you are incurious, too, and you need answers quickly. You can look them up on Google without making much of an effort.

When things are too easy we get out of the habit of thinking for ourselves. We outsource our curiosity to Google. So if you are a little bit lazy, which most of us are most of the time, Google can make you lazier still.

So you do think it is putting a damper on our curiosity?

It threatens our curiosity, and it is a big threat to the curiosity of our society. I want people to use Google in a way that enhances their curiosity and builds their curiosity rather than squashes it, which I think is a big danger.

Myths and Bible stories often slap women for their curiosity. Pandora and Eve, for example. Who can blame Eve for wanting to know more? Why would she want to spend the rest of her life lazing in a garden, naked?

Pandora and Eve didn’t want to accept other people’s version of the world. They weren’t happy accepting other people’s answers. I am interested in what you say about women and curiosity because there is a relationship between curiosity and power. There is a great quote from Vladimir Nabokov which I use at the front of the book: “Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.”

Curiosity was considered a vice for most of human history. Up until the 18th century, it was frowned upon by the church. The Catholic Church wanted to be the authority on how the world worked. Galileo (who challenged church orthodoxy about the relationship between Earth and the sun) is A good example of that.

The story about computer programming teacher Sugata Mitra is fascinating. He gave computers to kids living in the slums of New Delhi and other impoverished parts of India. The children mastered the technology quickly.

Then Mitra tested them by downloading information on DNA replication to see how well they handled that sophisticated stuff. I laughed when I read about a little girl who told Mitra that “apart from the fact that improper replication of the DNA molecule causes disease, we haven’t understood anything.”

Mitra’s computers were put in holes in the wall. And he ended up actually moving his computers into schools.

He was moving closer and closer to a school model of teaching. You can’t just give kids the Internet and assume they are going to work things out for themselves. Kids are very curious but they need that curiosity to be directed.

If you say to kids, “I want you to learn about evolution,” can you imagine the crazy stuff that is out there about evolution? The Internet is dominated by debates between Creationists and hard-line evolutionists. It would take a long time before you found something meaty and authoritative. It would be hard to tell the good stuff from the bad stuff. What adults and teachers are able do is make that easier. Kids need help with their curiosity.

What Mitra did is inspiring and hopeful. But even that girl in the end would have given up because her curiosity wasn’t being channelled and directed and enhanced by the presence of a knowledgeable teacher. And, eventually, that makes you incurious if you are not given the availability to learn.

Rorty believed the novel was a great way of stimulating and sustaining people’s curiosity about other people, particularly people who are different from themselves. For most of history we’ve lived in small homogenous groups, and it is really only since the growth of modern cities that we started to live together with others who are religiously and ethnically different.

Rorty believed the novel is a great way of giving you a peek into other people’s minds. You understand how they think, how they see the world. It is a line into someone else’s consciousness. Rorty thinks the novel stimulates curiosity and ultimately helps create empathy between very different types of people.

What can we do, in a society that thrives on smartphones and computers, to retain and massage our curiosity?

One of them is just keep learning. The simplest way of putting it is that the more knowledge you acquire, the better you will do in terms of your career and your life. We live in an increasingly complex and collaborative world. The more you learn, the easier it is to learn. You have to keep building your database, your stock of knowledge.

Who was the most interesting character you discovered through your research?

My favourite person in history is Benjamin Franklin. He stands for all the virtues of curiosity. He was interested in everything. He was interested in what electricity might be, what the lightning in the sky was. He was interested in ocean tides. He was interested in how to run a city. And he was curious like that right into his 70s. He was really interested in other people. He was a people person. In his letters and conversation, he was always picking the brains of other people. He wanted to talk to scientists and writers and engineers to know what they thought.

Franklin was able to think big and think small. It means having a grasp of the small detail as well as the larger picture. He was able to think philosophically about the role of democracy and how to build a just society. He wasn’t an intellectual shuttered to the world. For those reasons I see him as an icon of curiosity.

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.